In accordance with an embodiment, a method includes determining whether a frame received from a communication bus is encoded according to a particular communication protocol and is addressed to a particular electronic device; increasing a frame count value when the frame is encoded according to the particular communication protocol and is addressed to the particular electronic device based on the determination, wherein increasing the frame count value comprises increasing a count of a modular arithmetic counter circuit having a first bit depth, and the frame count value is constrained to a modulus value of the modular arithmetic counter circuit; setting a frame count status bit based on comparing the frame count value to threshold values, and transmitting a frame comprising the frame counter status bit over the communication bus, and resetting the frame count value at an end of a monitoring time interval.